Up Front – March 2014

The Legends at MCACN, Supercar Memories, and More!

Among the Legends at MCACN …

Joe Oldham (right, with his son Scott) is one of the lucky ones, a car magazine guy who wrote for Hi-Performance Cars, Speed & Supercar, and other publications back when muscle cars were new. (His book, Muscle Car Confidential, is a must-read. It will open your eyes to what our beloved cars were really like back in the day.) In the fall of 1968, Joe ordered a Baldwin-Motion SS-427 Camaro from Joel Rosen, a 427/automatic conversion with 4.10s and JL8 four-wheel discs. He loved the car, racing it on the street and on the strip and cruising around the New York area—for six whole months before it was stolen, never to be seen again.

Fast forward to 2013. Scott, who followed in his father’s auto journo footsteps, took on a major project when he built an exact reproduction of his father’s Motion Camaro. The results were stunning, Joe was thrilled, and the car made its debut at the Muscle Car and Corvette Nationals, parked in the Motion Madness display among other supercars built by Rosen and his crew.

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Supercar Memories From David Snyder

Artist David Snyder has rendered two supercar dealerships in his latest muscle car paintings. Don Delivers pictures Don Yenko’s Chevrolet dealership in 1969, the lot full of converted Camaros, Chevelles, and Novas. 2525 28th depicts Berger Chevrolet in 1971, with a ready supply of Camaros and other hot Chevys. Each painting has been reproduced in a limited number of prints; visit davidsnydercarart.com for more information on how to buy one for your garage.

Cover Car in Scale

Remember the LS6 Chevelle pilot car that we featured on the cover of our Mar. ’11 issue? That very Chevelle has been recreated in 1:18-scale die-cast form by the Acme Trading Company. Just 996 of the models will be made, each with a highly detailed engine and undercarriage, opening doors and trunk, and posable wheels. Visit acmediecast.com for more details.

Muscle Car Bookshelf

American Motors Corporation: The Rise and Fall of America’s Last Independent Automaker

We tend to look at AMC through the muscle car lens and see SC/Ramblers, Machines, AMXs, and Javelins. But the rich history of American Motors is far more diverse, as is this book, which covers a lot of ground in relatively few pages. The middle chapters are about the muscle, but the rest of the story, from the merger of Nash-Kelvinator and Hudson that founded AMC in 1954 to Renault’s sale of AMC to Chrysler in 1987, is all here too. The data-rich text is augmented by lots of archival photography and product sketches, including many renderings of AMC’s fascinating concept cars.